The invention concerns a method and an arrangement for purposes of determining an incidence of loading of an aircraft structure.
In the case of aircraft the registration and archiving of all incidences of damage and overload that an aircraft experiences during its service life, for example in the region of its structure, is prescribed for safety reasons. These incidences of damage occur in particular on the runway during fuelling, loading and unloading, and while maneuvering, and take place for example, as a result of collisions with freight containers or with towing vehicles. They also occur as a result of incidences of overload in all phases of flight, in particular in the case of so-called hard landings.
In the case of aircraft of metal construction an incidence of damage can be registered by means of a visual inspection. In the case of aircraft of fibre composite construction, on the other hand, incidences of damage often only appear as internal delaminations, which cannot be discerned externally, or only with difficulty. A solution of known art therefore proposes that the regions of the aircraft structure that are very likely to be damaged, such as the freight door region, for example, are to be provided with a sensor field consisting of a multiplicity of electrical sensors. However, this solution has the disadvantage that each of the sensors can only monitor a narrowly defined region, so that any incidences of damage that occur outside this region are not registered. Moreover the sensors, and in particular their cabling, result in a high aircraft weight and signify a high level of additional installation and assembly effort. Furthermore, as a result of the high number of components the tendency is for the reliability to reduce and the number of false reports to increase.